Category Archives: 2008

There were many lessons I learned but the main one was the power of asking questions. Even if you know nothing about a subject, you can learn about it by asking the right questions. It also taught me not to be nervous about going into a situation that was out of my comfort zone/I knew nothing about because that’s what journalists do! And I use those lessons every single day.

Writing from the first person point of view was much more difficult than any other journalism piece I have ever written, especially when it was family subject close to my heart. Also, along those lines, interviewing family members was more challenging than interviewing a stranger. Where do you begin when you have known someone your whole life? But, I learned that with proper editing and patience, a great piece can develop. To this day, I’m still very proud of this article.

[For this story,] I received 8th Place in the 49th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program.

- Stephanie Gomes

My brother is waiting for me when I walk in the door. He usually is. We stand there for a moment and exchange our usual punches and loving insults.

“So, I see you’ve been working out a lot,” I say sarcastically, punching his skinny arm.

“Shut up,” he says, laughing.

I can’t help but look at the left side of Mason’s face, which is still very swollen from his last surgery. The skin on that side of his face juts out slightly, and his left ear, which is closed shut, lies almost flat against his head and droops about an inch lower than his “good ear,” as he calls it. When looking straight on, you can hardly see that ear. His head of coarse, dusty-blonde hair hides the massive scar from his first surgery 14 years ago.

The biggest thing I learned in writing this story is that you find some of the greatest stories in the most unlikely places. I first met Pastor Winfrey, almost by accident, at a small “graduation” ceremony from a financial seminar, in his church basement, that I was writing an “event” story on for an introductory journalism class. He and I hit it off immediately and, as I listened to him, knew he had a great story to tell. I ended up writing a short profile piece on him for the introductory class and came back to him a year and a half later for the story in in Professor Harrington’s class. The rest, as they say, is history.

- Tom Bryant

Moses had his burning bush.

Saul had his light on the road to Damascus.

Ray Winfrey had his riding lawn mower.

Cutting grass can be a mindless, butt-numbing chore for a homeowner. For Ray Winfrey, who mowed for the Champaign Parks Department, it was job security. That is, until one late spring day in 1979, when his mowing went from mindless to mind-blowing.

“It was about 2 in the afternoon on a beautiful day,” he remembers. “Suddenly the mower had stopped, and I was on the ground. It was like I was in a daze, paralyzed. Out of nowhere, the Lord gave me this vision of what he wanted out of my life. He wanted me to start a church for the outcasts, those who’d been turned away everywhere else.”

Ray, age 41 then, got back on his mower, returned to his office, quit his job and set about building a church. Neither Moses nor Saul had an easy time of it after his call from God. The same was true for Ray Winfrey.

While reporting for this piece I learned to be patient and allow the story to reveal itself, rather than allowing my own ideas to guide the process. I initially thought this would be a story about the egalitarian, communitarian principles of contra dance and how they represented a left-over bit of 1960s idealism. But my reporting showed me that this wasn’t the story. The story was about two people in love whose whole relationship played out through contra dance. I never would have set out to write a piece about a married couple and their hobbies, but that’s the story I found–all I had to do was stay out of the way.

- Richard Anderson

Frances and Mitch Harris treasure these five minutes. They have plodded through the evening, trading partners and sharing laughs, surrendering to the spirit of community dance. Now they get to dance alone, together.

Frances and Mitch follow this routine every other Friday at the contra dances they have attended together for 11 years. This is where and how they met – at a contra dance in the Phillips Recreation Center in Urbana – same building, same room. He was a bachelor. She was divorced. A decade later, they are married – and still in love.

Prior to writing this story, I had almost never spent more than a week putting together a single journalistic piece. With the help of Professor Harrington, I learned just how crucial researching, compiling, drafting and editing are in putting together a serious work of journalism. The personal element in each of the story’s mini-vignettes made that work incredibly challenging for me, but also very gratifying. The story came in second place in the Brody Creative Feature Article Writing Awards in 2008.

- Jonathan Jacobson

Connie Bickers gave me simple directions to her house in St. Joseph, but the country roads in central Illinois all look the same and in the pitch black of a winter evening I get lost. I find her house when I see a memorial road sign labeled “Cory Hubbell Way.” The sign was dedicated last October by Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn in honor of Bickers’ son, who died while serving in Kuwait in 2003. He is the reason I’m here.

“Can I show you Cory’s room?” Connie asks, leading me into a space filled floor to ceiling with memorabilia from her son’s life. Awards and recognitions, his Army boots and his uniforms, an old football he tossed around in the desert signed by members of his unit, memorial quilts knitted by military mothers to honor his service, and Connie’s collection of at least 30 angels that she began assembling after Cory’s death at 20 years old.